Gaming Life in Japan

Welcome to IGN Japan for the year 2003. We're more improved than we were before and now we are more improved. Expect to see more of the with features and from around Japan.

As should be clearly evident from the above paragraph we, as we write this, are drunk off the free booze handed out by Micosoft at its Xbox live launch party. Notice how we spelled "Microsoft" as "Micosoft" in the last sentence? Alcohol will do that to you, kids. Also note how instead of correcting the error, we've instead decided to point it out to you?

Don't drink and write.

We're following this advice and writing as little as possible for this update. Next week's should be longer (assuming we aren't the recipients of free booze).

FAMITSU SCORE GET The latest issue of Famitsu has idol Ryoko Hirosue on its cover and contains plenty of homely pictures of the girl within. She's 22, and was born on 7/18 -- one day away from the one month anniversary of Anoop's birthday. The numbers just align too well.

There's nothing really of merit within the issue (aside from a handy Zelda guide), but here are the review scores.

Capcom vs SNK 2 EO, Xbox: 9, 7, 8, 8

Thousand Land, Xbox: 8, 8, 8, 8

Whacked!, Xbox: 6, 7, 7, 7

Phantasy Star Online Episode 1&2, Xbox: 9, 8, 9, 9

Tounou Taisen Live, Xbox: 6, 6, 6, 7

Ikaruga, GCN: 8, 8, 10, 10

V-Rally 3, PS2: 8, 7, 8, 8

Evolution Snowboarding, PS2: 8, 7, 8, 7

Get Bakkaazu, PS2: 5, 5, 4, 5

We see some lovin' for the Xbox Live and Ikaruga, neither of which will sell enough copies to recoup development costs. Ahem.

XBOX LIVES That's "Lives" pronounced as in Xbox Live. Anyhow, the 16th marks the start of the Japanese Xbox Live program. Microsoft put an end to the beta test last week and shut down all the servers, presumably to begin operation some time on Thursday. Wait a minute... that's right now!

We'll have more on Xbox Live's Japanese debut shortly here on IGN, once we've built up the guts to speak to some Japanese gamers over that headset thing.

A typical Xbox Live sales kiosk. This one isat AsoBitCity in Akihabara. Check out the signto the right. It says that this is your lastchance to buy the limited edition skeleton Xboxsystems. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

This has nothing to do with Xbox Live, buta first glance at this massive ad outside Akihabarastation suggested the birds had decided to rageagainst Microsoft. Some ads don't translatewell to large billboards.

YEAR REVIEW IN The latest Famitsu features a look back at the year in Japanese sales, and for anyone who's been paying attention, the numbers shouldn't be all that surprising. Let's have a look-see at some highlights.

Software sales were, of course, dominated by a late entry: Pokemon Ruby & Saphire. Taken together, the two managed to sell nealry three times as many copies as the second best selling title, Konami's Winning Eleven 6 (remember... World Cup year, World Cup year!). Trailing behind those two was Onimusha 2, giving this year three million sellers.

Here area some of our favorite entries from the top 100 as provided by Famitsu:

We spot two very notable entries. First up is Pokemon Crystal, which, having been released in December of the year 2000, still managed to place in at number 62 with over 200,000 units sold this year alone! We'd also refer you to Final Fantasy X International. This re-release comes in at number 54 also with over 200,000 units sold. Expect the "International Edition"/"Final Mix" thing to become the standard thing at Square from now on.

As is plainly clear from the above figures, things haven't changed much as far as Japanese tastes are concerned. The chart includes 33 action titles (up one from 2001's 32), making it, once again, the most popular genre. RPGs once again come in second with 25 (up from 20 of 2001). Following this are Action/Adventure (9), Simulation (7), Action-RPG (4), Simulation-RPG (4), Adventure (4), Board Game (4) and the elusive "Other" (10... compared to 2001's 20).

Splitting things up company by company, Nintendo once again comes out on top by a large margin, and that isn't even when including sales of the Pokemon games (The latest Pokemon game is published by a company called "Pokemon"). Here's each publisher with its number of units sold and number of titles in the above list:

The above list only contains the top selling software, but it's clear that a lot of what came out didn't sell. A total of 1,273 titles were released last year, with the PSX accounting 378 of those and the PS2 taking up 429. The GBA saw the release of 205 titles, followed by (believe it or not), Dreamcast with 73 titles (most of these seem to have been budget-priced re-releases). Xbox and Gamecube follow with 68 releases a piece.

Of course, the PS2 was the dominant system of the year (with the GBA shooting up towards the end). On the top 100 chart, the PS2 managed to grab 55.2% of the market, followed by the Game Boy Advancewith 35.1%, the GameCube with 12.4%, the PSX with 4.8% and the GameBoy with 1.2%. Xbox comes in two spaces after that with 0.5%, trailing the Dreamcast and its 0.8%.

The PS2 sold more than just software, though. Sony's system was the number one system of the year, selling 3,732,020 units (up from 3,603,667 in 2001). GBA comes in second with 3,366,723 units (up from 4,200,315 of 2001). Following that are GameCube (1,034,484, up from 925,927) and Xbox (327,699).

For those keeping up with the weekly sales charts over the first few months of the year, it may have been difficult to imagine the GBA doing so well. In fact, the GBA, like all consoles, saw a huge spike towards the end of the year. The only difference for the GBA was that the spike was steeper than other consoles, allowing the portable to overtake the PS2 in sales at the beginning of October and remain the number one selling console to the time of this writing.

The turning point for the GBA occurred in October, a month before the release of Pokemon. The PS2 saw a couple of sales spikes all its own in March due to the release of Onimusha 2 and December around the release of the Ratchet & Clank bundle and new price point. The GameCube was bumpier, with each title seeming to cause a jump in sales. Biohazard (3/22), Super Mario Sunshine (7/19) and Zelda (12/13) all held the system up through the year.

IGN JAPAN GAME OF THE YEAR GET! When we grabbed a similar set of numbers from Famitsu last year, we also named our choice for Japanese game of the year. This year, we'll do the same. The choice should be obvious, given the endless hype we've been throwing about, but this year's GLIJGOTY award goes to:

NEZMIX!!!

Ha ha ha ha ha! Just kidding. We would never give the coveted GLIJGOTY award to such a wretchedly bad piece of crap. No, no, no... the REAL GLIJGOTY award goes to, of course, Nintendo's Zelda: Kaze no Takuto

Released on 12/13, this game almost made us overlook the fact that we still can't play Metroid Prime. While it does have its share of problems as you make your way through to the end, there's never been a game quite like Zelda: Kaze no Takuto and everyone out there simply MUST play it.

If you've imported the game and don't know what you're doing, turn back to IGN on Friday for a full translation of all the dialogue. It's a bit late, but we hope it will help to improve your enjoyment of an awesome game.

YOU GUESS THE SHOES! New to IGN Japan! Can you figure out to whom these shoes belong? All three of the people in this picture are part of the gaming industry. Guess who's who to win fabulous prizes like... like... ooh, how about a gigantic wall-paper-sized pic of Andria Lee Sang (assuming she allows it).

CM GET! We provided you with 25 videogame commercials (in addition to more than 10 wacky non-game commercials) before leaving for Christmas. This week, unfortunately, that number goes down to... three. Remember, we're drunk off free booze provided at the Xbox Live launch party. Hiccup!

But oh what commercials they are! Check out a strange Xbox Live ad ("eh, let's ignore the whole internet thing"), a strange Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball ad ("eh, let's ignore the whole sex appeal thing") and the very upfront and informative ad for the Game Boy Advance SP. This latter ad features a little blurb about Final Fantasy Tactics Advance at the end. Square!